Yves Bonnefoy: père et fils de son Shakespeare par Sara Amadori (review)

History and Literary Modernity” and in Agamben’s “Creation and Salvation” which refers to redemption as a potentiality that aims to save what will be destroyed anyway “leaving the redemptive act without an object” (34). Chapter two contrasts Walter Benjamin and Fondane. Whereas Fondane’s thinking more fruitfully engages with Baudelaire’s exploration of the abyss of poetry and his move beyond redemption, Benjamin ultimately retains a focus on the messianic that is at odds with the poet’s uncompromising view of fallen humanity. The compelling third chapter on the (im)possibility of ending considers form and content in tandem as the end of the poem and the end of time are played off each other. Agamben’s reflections on the “sense of time that time takes to come to an end”(115) helps us understand the infinite doubling back and deferral of closure in Baudelaire’s poems. The twists and turns of the analysis in chapters four and five accurately expose the impossibility of redemption and the paradoxical logic of salvation that govern Cioran’s lucid thought. The final chapter concentrates on the relationship between esthetics and ethics in Baudelaire’s prose poems, in dialogue with Nancy’s recent writings on Christianity.While this book is for those who have grappled with Baudelaire’s difficult writings, it cogently demonstrates how his poetry inspires twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophical reflection on the fall and redemption, progress and stagnation, ennui and action, and violence and community—theologically-inflected concepts that continue to challenge humanistic thinking in our own secular society. Florida State University Aimée Boutin Amadori, Sara. Yves Bonnefoy: père et fils de son Shakespeare. Paris: Hermann, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7056-8926-1. Pp. 363. The title refers to the dialogical relationship, or “osmose féconde” (11) between Bonnefoy’s translations of Shakespeare—Henri IV (1956) through Comme il vous plaira (2003) and the sonnets (2007)—and his own poetry, from Traité du pianiste (1946) through Le digamma (2012). Amadori wishes to “rendre compte de la façon dont l’activité traduisante a pu accompagner le développement de l’œuvre poétique et critique de Bonnefoy”(14). Chapters one through three synthesize Bonnefoy’s“po- éthique” (32) of translation. Amadori adopts Antoine Berman’s notion (L’épreuve de l’étranger, 1984) that translation is a welcoming of the “Étranger” (14) of the TD, or “texte de depart” (15), into the TA, or “texte d’arrivée” (29). A translator must “expliciter ce qui reste obscur dans le TD” (39) and, as Bonnefoy says, help it mature in contact with post-Elizabethan readers. Chapter two discusses French translations of Shakespeare and how Bonnefoy differs from predecessors and contemporaries. Chapters four and five examine Bonnefoy’s translations of tragedies (Hamlet, Le roi Lear, Roméo et Juliette, Macbeth, Othello) and comedies (Le conte d’hiver, Comme il vous plaira) and how he revised them in successive editions. Amadori highlights 210 FRENCH REVIEW 91.2 Reviews 211 significant trends from the semantic, prosodic, and syntactic analysis which she compiled in an Excel database comparing Shakespeare’s originals and Bonnefoy’s translations. As Bonnefoy progresses from earlier to later versions, he places more emphasis on simplicity, “finitude” (162), and “intensification du concret” (163) to translate the embodied qualities of Shakespearean language. He experiments with various meters and devices, including unorthodox placement of the mute “e” and enjambment, to convey the “dimension rythmique et prosodique” (142) of iambic pentameter. Expressions underscoring the TD’s “oralité populaire” (149) and mixed registers, or “trivialité” (54), become more frequent. Bonnefoy’s own development parallels the“maturation de la pensée de Shakespeare”(90). The protagonists’solitude in Hamlet and Macbeth, among other plays, pervades Bonnefoy’s earlier work, Du mouvement et de l’immobilité de Douve and Hier régnant desert, which Amadori calls his “phase Hamlet” (90), marked by “illusions narcissiques” (89) and monologic relationships between hero and others. Women in Romeo and Juliette, The Winter’s Tale, and As You Like It craft a “phase Hermione” (Shakespeare’s Hermione, in The Winter’s Tale) rooted in“amour authentique”(92) and“existence incarnée”(98), which introduce deep“compassion”(81) into Shakespeare’s...